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Aug. 17 — Judge Paul J. Watford, who was one of only two black judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the Ninth Circuit when he was confirmed, might get another chance at being nominated
to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Watford is now being mentioned as a potential Supreme Court nominee of Democratic
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton by “well-connected groups in Washington,” according
to a recent report by
The Hill.

Past praise from prominent conservatives, along with his broad experience as an attorney,
could weigh in favor of Watford's confirmation if nominated.

The appeals court found that the ordinance was content neutral and therefore constitutional.

But Watford dissented, saying that the ordinance violated the First and 14th amendments
“by drawing content-based distinctions among different categories of non-commercial
speech.”

“The most glaring illustration is the ordinance's favorable treatment of ‘political'
and ‘ideological' signs relative to the treatment accorded the non-commercial signs”
the church sought to display, he said.

The Supreme Court agreed in an opinion written by Thomas, in
Reed v. Town of Gilbert, 83 U.S.L.W. 4444, 2015 BL 193522 (U.S. June 18, 2015) (83 U.S.L.W. 1950, 6/23/15).

The ordinance was “content based on its face,” the court said.

The regulation couldn't survive the strict scrutiny that applies to such regulations,
the court found.

Hotel Registry Searches

The Supreme Court also agreed with Watford in a case involving warrantless police
searches of hotel guest registries.

Writing for the en banc Ninth Circuit, Watford said the provision was “facially invalid
under the Fourth Amendment,” which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Non-consensual inspections of hotel registries “involve both a physical intrusion
upon the hotel's private papers and an invasion of the hotel's protected privacy interest
in those papers,” the opinion said.

The court said it agreed with the Ninth Circuit that the provision was “facially invalid
insofar as it fails to provide any opportunity for precompliance review”
before requiring hotels to provide their registries to police.

Immigration Controversy

Current Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said in
2012 that his opposition to Watford's confirmation was “based on substantive concerns
that I have regarding Mr. Watford's views on both immigration and the death penalty.”

Such concerns haven't disappeared among Watford's critics.

The conservative
National Review Online recently criticized him as being a “standard ACLU liberal” partly based on those
two issues.

“He is an anti-law enforcement extremist whose record on issues like illegal immigration
and the death penalty makes it clear that he would push the Supreme Court to the far
left,” the NRO blog post said.

Grassley cited Watford's work as an attorney partnering with the American Civil Liberties
Union and National Immigration Law Center, in opposition to “Arizona's 2010 immigration
bill” known as S.B. 1070.

Watford
worked as “co-counsel on an amicus brief” opposing the bill in
United States v. Arizona, 641 F.3d 339 (9th Cir.
2011).

In
Arizona, the Ninth Circuit affirmed a district court's preliminary injunction order against
certain provisions of the bill.

One such provision, “Section 3,” made it a misdemeanor for an immigrant to not carry
immigration registration documents.

The amicus brief argued that Arizona failed “to account for the complexities and realities
of Federal immigration law.”

Those lacking such documents were at risk of “constant and repeated criminal prosecution,”
the brief argued.

Grassley said that Watford went beyond arguing on his client's behalf, having “adopted
those legal theories as his very own.”

The senator cited a 2010 speech in which Watford said the bill was unconstitutional.

Grassley criticized Watford for declining “to answer many of my questions” on the
matter, despite having spoken publicly about it.

The Supreme Court found that Section 3 was preempted by federal regulations less than
a month after Watford's confirmation, partially affirming and partially reversing
the Ninth Circuit in
Arizona v. United States, 80 U.S.L.W. 4539, 2012 BL 157302 (U.S. June 25, 2012) (80 U.S.L.W. 1792, 6/26/12).

Tough Call

In
Ryan, death row inmate Theodore Washington filed a notice of appeal one day after the
federal filing deadline.

The full Ninth Circuit ordered the district court to reenter judgment “so that his
appeal could be deemed timely.”

But Watford dissented.

He took “no pleasure in voting to dismiss” the inmate's appeal.

“Dismissing the appeal because his lawyer filed the notice one day late strikes me
as a grave injustice.”

But dismissal was required under the high court's decision in
Bowles v. Russell, 551 U.S. 205 (2007), he said.

Bowles found that the deadline for filing civil appeals was “jurisdictional and thus not
subject to equitable exceptions.”

However, Watford said “
Bowles stands on shaky ground and merits reconsideration.”

That's because with “one exception, the Court's post-
Bowles cases have routinely held statutory filing deadlines to be non-jurisdictional.”

Nonetheless,
Bowles controlled and required dismissal of the appeal “as untimely, even at the cost of
ending Washington's bid to obtain habeas relief from his death sentence on grounds
similar to those that spared his co-defendant's life.”

Well-Rounded

Watford—former co-chair of the American Bar Association's Appellate Practice Committee—had
notably broad experience as an attorney.

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